Too Simple

I had to laugh a little as I walked away from a nice visit with someone who happens to be a very successful and prominent business leader in the Triangle Region of North Carolina. This guy is a brilliant businessman, and he knows his stuff when it comes to his line of work. He also shares his opinions freely. He took me to task over my message, “we create our lives one decision at a time.”

I promise not to bore you with all the details of our back and forth exchange, but he said something like this to start things off:

“…you’ve made it sound too simple…once someone gets a job, gets married, gets kids, gets settled into the rhythm of that life, their next decision has little power to change any of that…”

You might already know that I heartily and respectfully disagreed with him on this notion. So, I asked him a few questions that went something like this:

“…well if our next decision doesn’t have any impact on our life, exactly which one will?…will it be the one after that?…or maybe the one after that?…wouldn’t that mean that we are all stuck then?…if I have made it too simple, would you think I might get more takers if I made it complicated and drew up a flow chart that demonstrates how every decision that we have made up to this very moment in our lives has landed us right wherewe are right now, then connect the dots?…wouldn’t that be too complicated and I wouldn’t I lose them?…”

He interrupted me as I peppered him with these questions and exclaimed, “I am not saying we’re stuck! I’d never say we’re stuck! That would be awful!”

“Well then,” I replied, “I agree that being stuck would be awful, so how would you propose that people go about making changes to their lives?

After several seconds of silence, he then blurted out, “I’d tell them to get quiet and think about what they want out of life and just go for it, get started, quit waiting around, and go for it now!”

Exactly.

We shook hands as we said goodbye, and in a soft voice he said, “I suppose you might be onto something with that whole ‘next decision’ thing. I just hope you haven’t made it sound too simple.”

Me too.

We are creating our lives…one decision at a time.

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